


Reloading

by Canaan



Series: How It Could Have Happened [33]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Angst, Gen, Introspection, Stand Alone, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-06
Updated: 2012-10-06
Packaged: 2017-11-15 17:37:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/529879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canaan/pseuds/Canaan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Someone</i> has to teach Amy Pond how to shoot a rifle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reloading

**Author's Note:**

> Part of my How It Could Have Happened continuity, but can be read stand-alone. This was supposed to be an almost-fluffy little drabble. 850 words later, it's anything but fluffy.

The rifle is bulky and awkward in Amy's grip, an assemblage of plastics and metals probably not found on Earth, at least not in this time. Not that it matters, not in this deserted stretch of American desert. No nosy neighbors to look out the window and ask what they're up to, which must be why River brought them here.

She's not sure that makes it any easier. The last time she held a gun-- _really_ held a gun--she nearly hit her own daughter. She swears she can feel death weighing the thing down as she sets the butt against her shoulder, even though she's firing blanks.

"Now aim down the barrel, Mum."

It's still disconcerting when River calls her Mum, which she does by fits and starts. "Shouldn't there be a better guideline than that? A laser or gunsight or something?"

From the corner of her eye, she notices River pulling a face, the expression eerily Mels', despite her regeneration. "Sometimes you'll have one and sometimes you won't. That's the whole point of the training rifle--it can simulate so many different types of weapon. Right now it's being very simple. Better to start learning without than with. That way, it only gets easier from here."

So much for Amy's next argument, that a pistol is smaller, and wouldn't that be easier? She actually remembers being comfortable with a pistol, never mind that Area 52 never really happened, not in the universe as it is. She looks along the barrel, trying to draw a straight line from her eye through the gun and into the practice target. When she thinks she has it, she exhales the way River told her to and squeezes down on the trigger.

The "training" kick rocks her back on her heels, and a yellow mark appears on the rough stone behind the target, well above where she was aiming.

"Not bad for a first shot," River says. "Most of the guns you'll actually need to use are stun guns, which don't kick. But you know as well as I do, it's best to be prepared when traveling with the Doctor. Go on, try it again."

After an hour, Amy is sweaty, frustrated, and no closer to hitting the target. It's as if part of her doesn't really _want_ to hit anything. "It's useless," she says, dropping the training gun to the ground. "I'm crap. No wonder the Doctor doesn't like these things."

"The Doctor could kill with a teaspoon and cellotape. Most of us don't have that option." River sighs as she picks up the gun and tries to give it back.

Amy folds her arms across her chest. River just looks sad, like there's something she can't say, but it hurts her anyway. A lump forms in Amy's throat. She's already failed her daughter in so many ways. "Okay. Give it here."

"As long as you don't want to hit the target, you won't," River says as she hands the rifle back. "Imagine the person you're aiming at means to hurt someone you love."

Neither of them will say it, but Amy knows they're both thinking of Madame Kovarian. 

_She'd dreamed about being pregnant, but she'd just assumed that all young women did, now and again. When the Doctor had aimed his screwdriver at her and she'd opened her eyes in Madame Kovarian's living hell, pain ripping through her abdomen, those sleeping dreams had become waking nightmares. She'd wanted to scream, wanted to clutch at Rory's hand, wanted him there beside her._

_(But he wasn't here, and she was. And since Amy was all their baby had, she would just have to be enough. She groaned and screamed her way through labor, and at least it wasn't that bitch Kovarian who came afterward. No, there were nurses to clean the baby and coo over her, nurses to tell Amy she had a daughter and put the tiny bit of humanity in her arms.)_

_She'd examined those little hands and feet. She'd counted each little finger and toe, each with its own teeny nail. Their baby--and she'd have to think of a name, God, she hadn't even known she was pregnant, how would she have thought about a name?--sucked fiercely at Amy's breast, small and perfect, and Amy thought those were Rory's eyes, but her nose, and wouldn't their daughter be thankful for that someday? It was her nose in perfect miniature on that little face..._

Kovarian stole little Melody away from her, not once but twice, and that empty place where she was a mum, and yet she wasn't, ached so much longer than her milk-swollen breasts had. 

Amy raises the rifle through the memory of helplessness, rage seething through her as she sights on the target. This time, the yellow mark splashes the right-hand side of the target. It's not dead center, not yet, but she knows that she'll improve.

"That's right, Mum," River says. Her voice is soft, but her eyes burn.

There's nothing of River's parents in the way she looks now. She doesn't have Amy's figure or Rory's hair or her granddad's smile. But that look in her eyes, that fierce pride and the rage burning beneath it...those are as familiar to Amy as old friends. 

They've stared back at her from a mirror.


End file.
